A pack rat kept more than he should;
He saved every wood scrap he could.
For more room to stack.
he built him a rack;
In doing so, used up his wood!
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Silly, but today's project
accumulation
choking the room bitterly
an embarrassment
carefully tromping through it
side-stepping junk gingerly
My pack rack eye-tis
surrounds me untidily
disturbing eyesore
jumping over largest pile
not inviting company
I am in my beautifully decorated office where I have dragged overflow
A baby gift that should have been given over to the new mama long ago,
Reams of paper that are not going to walk themselves to the printer.
Notebooks and pencils that could be put on a shelf for the winter.
It is weird that my office was gorgeous for a month or so
Then I started dragging and dumping when I should have said whoa.
Sure in three weeks I discarded seven truckloads of junk
But to think I am a neatnick is a complete load of bunk.
The real problem is that I started five projects at the same time.
They overwhelmed me, shut me down, and gave me walls I wanted to climb.
I have not seen my relatives or my friends although three weeks I have been home.
I am sorting and throwing, every pencil box, toothbrush, and comb.
When I get finished, it will be such a welcome sigh of relief.
Packrat people should move every year or two is my honest belief.
a planned one day trip
has the feeling of five days
pack rat vacation
I am sneaking
Down a side street
I see trashcans
In a backyard
I walk over
To look in them
Refuse waiting
To be picked up
I am happy
To collect it
Because I am
Just a pack rat
This photograph of me and you
gauze red shirt and winter sunned
on our way to New York City
to traipse the town and eat Chinese
is still on my refrigerator door.
Twelve years passed, maybe more.
Somehow our smiles with open mouths
to catch the air of frozen thoughts
in camera eyes and shutters and clicks
self-set on the roof of your car,
still grab me in passing and make me look.
That day, we listened to Ben on the radio.
Laughed like goofs to our self-made
bootlegs of concerts where we stood three feet from the stage.
Me, being asked to play his piano.
Him - with birthing shoulders, so small, so slight.
It's dizzying really.
We escaped time, life, history
just to step our own feet in that city smell,
that breath of sidewalk vendors, almost Spring tulips,
stone statues and salty sand from the last snowfall of winter.
All this time, and this one photograph, held with a tacky magnet on my refrigerator
holds a memory, and a memory, and a memory again.
- and people wonder why I am a pack rat...
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